'The War Z' Goes Offline After Hack

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"The War Z," the controversial zombie survival game, is offline after its forums and databases were hacked, according to OP Productions, the publisher of the game.

While the company insists no payment information was accessed in the hack, it does urge all players to change their passwords. "The data accessed included email addresses used to log-in to the forum, forum passwords which we encrypt, email addresses used to log-in to the game, encrypted game passwords as well as in-game character names and the IP addresses from which players log-in to the forum and to the game. If you posted other information to the forum it is likely that such data was accessed as well. We do not collect the names or addresses of our gamers so that information was not impacted unless you posted it on the forum. We are investigating whether additional information may have been obtained," the company writes.

This is the latest in a series of setbacks for the game's maker. When the game launched last year players said not only was the game broken but that it was falsely advertised and defrauded its customers. As a result, the game was suspended by Steam and Sergey Titov, director of Hammerpoint, the game's developer, was forced to issue an apology. The game was eventually re-instated on Steam.

As for what Hammerpoint will do going forward, the developer writes, "We have engaged outside experts and investigators to assist in our investigation of this incident and committed substantial resources to that effort. We have identified number of ways access was obtained and have enhanced our security to improve game and forum safety. We are undertaking a full review and update of our servers and the services we use and adding additional security mechanisms. In addition to this post, we are emailing all of our players just to make certain that everyone is informed and has been advised to change their passwords.This has been a humbling experience for us. While we all know that there is no guaranty of security on the internet, our goal is to try our very best to protect your data. We sincerely apologize."